“It wanted . . . spell,” I said, breathing hard, my body tense with effort. “I . . . tricked. Froze it in . . . moment.”
Fallon’s smile was papery. “Clever,” he said, then sobered. “It will not last. Lugal was fooled by its own disdain—the stronger intelligences believe us to be little more than chattel to be run under their wheels. But it is powerful, and you can already feel it slipping your bonds, yes?”
I nodded. Words were too difficult.
Fallon pursed his lips. “A pint, Bosch. Perhaps a bit more. On my mark.”
Enustari were used to people bleeding for them. Someone like Fallon had a casual expectancy that when they needed gas in the air, there would be gas in the air.
“Mageshkumar,” Hiram said, sounding relieved. “He’s—”
“You,” Fallon said quietly. “You will bleed.”
Hiram shut up. My gasam was learning his true place in the world. That sort of thing was never pretty. Ustari varied just like other people: You had smart ones, dumb ones, funny ones, thin ones, fat ones, tall and short ones, but none of us were nice. You can’t rely on killing people for the things you want and be nice, and we as a class killed everyone. We are not good people.
“Mr. Vonnegan,” Fallon said as the sweet sour sense of gas hit the air, the most wonderful feeling of nausea. Hiram was surprisingly robust. “It will resist me. This will not be pleasant.” He began speaking the Words of a spell I’d never heard. Five Words in, and Lugal kicked, sensing that someone was trying to evict it, and my veins lit on fire.
I screamed.
With a crash, the bathroom door was knocked inward, shoving a woozy Hiram aside as Mags leaped into the room, face red, fists clenched. “Lem!”
My pet Mags, ready to rip the claw-foot tub from the floor and start swinging it around like a club until everyone but me was dead. Fallon frowned at me, closed his eyes, and broke off speaking his spell, causing it to collapse around us with a mild explosion of heat and air.
I sagged in relief as the pain faded. My own cobbled-together spell, keeping the demon frozen within me had snapped, too brittle and fragile for all of this commotion, and I could sense the demon pushing outward again, stretching to reclaim me.
“Silig,” Fallon said clearly, almost casually, and Mags froze in place. Fallon took a deep breath and looked at me wearily. “Let us begin again.”
He started at the beginning as Hiram leaned against the sink with a grunt and a wince. I burst into invisible flame again. I could feel Lugal worming its way into my nerves and muscles, clamping down tightly and sending agony deep into me until it was all I was, just a sack filling with green-yellow acidic agony.
Fallon cast with a steady, somnolent rhythm and tone, his Words a mumble that only he and the universe could understand. Outside my shell of pain and suffering, I could feel the power of the spell as it grew, as Hiram sagged against the sink, his open wound feeding it one pulse at a time. The spell was all buildup, all mounting tension. I was a Trickster; most of the spells I used were short and dirty, over almost before I finished speaking them. This was all prelude, all grace notes, subtle and interlocking, like epic poetry.
I could feel the demon panic, twisting and struggling, trying to escape the fate that Fallon was spinning for it, but I could tell it wasn’t going to. The old man had it; from the first Word, the old man had it. When Fallon tied off the end of the spell, the temperature in the room rose ten degrees and I felt like my skeleton was being removed from my body by a giant pair of invisible tweezers. I stiffened, my limbs going out stiffly from my body, and I fell back against the wall with a thud.
“Come, now,” Fallon whispered. “Your resistance is unseemly.”
Like steam, the pain sizzled off me and I dropped to the floor, limp and soaked through with sweat from head to toe. Even my much darned socks were squishy with it. I was shaking, and then with a roar Mags was back in motion, crashing into the wall next to me and mashing his huge arm behind me and around my shoulders. Then he went still.
“Lem?” he said in a small voice.
I looked at him and patted his knee. “It’s all right, Mags,” I said. “I’m okay.”
Fallon’s smile was the tiniest movement at the corners of his mouth. “Good! Sometimes there is tremendous damage from such rescues.” He slapped my leg. “Come! There is no time for loafing. You must tell us everything.”
I looked up at him, moving my head like pushing a boulder up a small hill. “Us?”
Fallon stood up and clapped his hands. “Come, boy,” he said, shooting his cuffs. “Meet your betters.”
III.
9.